The inferior temporal cortex is important for the visual processing underlying pattern recognition, and single neurons in this area are responsive to visual patterns. We are studying two aspects of these neuronal responses: one is the role of different stimulus features, and the other is the behavioral context in which the stimulus is presented. The presence of visual stimuli other than the probe stimulus markedly reduces neuronal responses to the probe, revealing an interaction within the visual system. Selective attention to the location or intensity of a probe will also reduce neuronal responses to it. However, if the pattern of the probe stimulus becomes important for discrimination purposes, then the neuronal response improves, approaching or even surpassing that seen when neither suppressive influence is present, demonstrating for the first time at the single cell level that attention to different stimukus features may have opposite effects on the response of the same neuron.